FanCave Five – DraftKings NBA

What’s up everyone!? I’m introducing a new article series called the FanCave Five. These sets of articles will be give you 5 players on the slate that I think will win you all the money. It’s easy to write up the chalk players, so this article will aim for the lower owned guys. I’ll normally try to give you a player at every position, but some slates we may like multiple Point Guard’s, so we’ll take it day by day. Alright fellas, now that you all know what’s going on, let’s jump into today’s slate!

Tonight’s slate looks so intriguing. We have a bunch of stars in smash spots. We have a bunch of value plays that let us fit these stars. I think the “chalk” roster construction will be a few stars mashed with all the value. You all know who the chalk is, so we don’t need to talk about that here. We need to find an edge. Here are 5 guys that I believe will be awesome leverage plays and hopefully help you climb up those tournament leader boards.

John Wall – @ BKN – $8,700

My first play I give you is John Wall. The Wizards take on the Nets tonight, which we know is a juicy matchup. The Wizards will be playing up in pace which are games that John Wall absolutely thrives in. The Nets don’t have anyone that is going to be able to stop Wall (DVP = 26th at the PG position). With a 212 total and only a 5.5-point spread, this game could be a shootout that stays relatively close to the finish. Knowing all of this stuff, shouldn’t his ownership be through the roof? That may not be the case tonight, folks. With Napier, Harden, and Westbrook all PG eligible, and fairly chalky, I don’t think Wall will be high owned at all. At $8.7K, I could see him smashing for 6-7x, letting you climb up those leaderboards.

Lou Williams – @ HOU – $7,200

Another guy in a juicy matchup is Lou Williams verses the Rockets. Milos Teodosic is going to miss tonight’s game, along with the obvious LAC inactives (Beverley, W. Johnson, Gallinari, Griffin). Clippers need to find scoring from someone in order to keep up with the high-powered Rockets offense. With all these guys out, Lou Williams becomes the guy with all the usage. He sees an insane 37.2% usage rate with all of these guys off the floor. Now you enter the fast-paced matchup that he will be in. Then once you realize that he’ll probably get some James Harden defense, you start salivating. Lou Williams legit has 60 DKP upside tonight. I’m thinking recency bias might keep his ownership from being too high. Also, like I mentioned earlier, people are going to want to fit some combo of Westbrook/Harden/Durant/AD/Boogie/Giannis. This fact makes it hard to fit these $7-8K players.

Rondae Hollis-Jefferson – vs WAS – $6,000

RHJ is another guy that I really like tonight. I normally do not target Nets players, because of the disparity in minutes, but RHJ at least sees somewhat consistent minutes. 6 of the last 8 games that he has played he’s seen at least 30 minutes. RHJ is a guy that can do a little bit of everything. He scores, rebounds, and also gets his fair share of defensive peripherals. In my John Wall write-up, I discussed how this game has a nice total and a close spread. I really do like this game to shoot out, which increases RHJ’s upside. In the Nets’ last meeting with the Wizards, RHJ put up 36 DKP. That’s enough for 6x, which would be a nice hit. I could even see RHJ pushing up to 8x his salary. There is some risk to it, but RHJ could be virtually unowned, so I believe it would be worth it.

Julius Randle – @ GS – $5,400

Here’s probably the riskiest pick out of these 5 players. A lot of us were on Randle Wednesday, in which he let us all down. Surprisingly, he only played 8 minutes in a game where Brook Lopez was inactive. Well fast forward two days and he has another juicy matchup against the Warriors. We love, love, love Randle in high-paced matchups, which is what we’re getting here. Brook Lopez is still indeed out, so if you think Randle could get some run, then he could help you out a ton. Personally, I believe a lot of things went in to him only seeing 8 minutes last game. The Rockets were playing small, with Capela out. They were playing a lot of Anderson, Tucker, Ariza as the bigs. I think this led to the guards/wings for LAL to play more. I also think Kyle Kuzma’s career day had something to do with it. I really do think Randle gets back to seeing 30+ minutes tonight. We saw him play 31 minutes versus the Warriors on Monday and he put up 34.25 DKP. With Kuzma being chalky tonight, Randle is the ultimate leverage pivot. He could smash for you at a low ownership.

Nikola Jokic – @ POR – $7,400

One of my favorite plays on the slate is Nikola Jokic. Jokic is so cheap compared to what he usually is. Jokic’s talent is a $9K player, but with his recent injury, his minutes have been down (dragging his price down). In the last game we saw his minutes jump up to 36, though. At this price, Jokic’s floor is extremely safe and he has insane upside. Even when he was only seeing 22-25 minutes a game, he was almost hitting 5x value at this price. If his minutes stay in the mid 30’s, Jokic could go off on this team. He had a very solid outing versus the TWolves on Wednesday that was held back by 10 TURNOVERS! If he can limit the turnovers, he should be able to exceed value again. Let’s not forget guys, this dude has legit triple-double upside. Love him tonight.

Other Basic Notes

As you guys can see, I really am trying not to mentioned guys that will be TOO high owned. You all know that James Harden, Shabazz Napier, CJ McCollum, and other chalk guys are good plays. But how are we helping you at FanCave if all we’re going to do is tell you the easy plays?! We’re going to try to find nice pivots for you to hopefully get an edge in those tournaments. Let me say this though: I’m not shooting for the sub 2% guys. I’m aware that some of these guys will carry ownership, but I don’t see any of them being insanely high owned. This isn’t supposed to be a Criminal Ownership article (shoutout to my main man Johnny Espizito).

Favorite Game Stack – NO @ ORL

Was so very close to writing up Elf on this Christmas Weekend

Alright guys, that’s going to wrap up the first ever DraftKings FanCave Five article. I hope you guys enjoyed reading. I hope some of these plays help you cash big tonight! If you have any questions, you can find me on twitter (@breeden_bryce) or you can always hit up any of the FanCave (@FanCaveDFS) guys!